New Treasure Goblins on the PTR

We’ve talked about the four types of new Treasure Goblins since three of them were debuted at Blizzcon last month, and shown some screens now and then, but I’ve seen all of them numerous times during PTR play the last week or two, so here’s a compilation.

New Treasure Goblins on the PTR:

Malevolent Tormentor

First up, the least visual.

Malevolent Tormentor

The Malevolent Tormentor is a new type that was not shown at Blizzcon, and he’s basically the Resplendent Chest version of a normal goblin. Not glowing golden (he seems to be a bit darker in color, actually), but he drops far more loot than a normal goblin, a fact that’s finally testable/observable now that the community buff is over. While it was in effect, every goblin (except sometimes Malevolent Tormentors) spawned in pairs, and with the huge legendary buff rate, normal Gobbies dropped 1-3 legendary items every time, making them nearly as rewarding as the Malevolent Tormentors who dropped 2-5 legendary items (during the buff).

With the buff expired, I was curious to see how a Malevolent Tormentor would drop, and happily, I found one with my new S2 Monk last night. He spawned solo, in a normal game (not a Rift), and since I wasn’t playing my DH, he wasn’t instantly obliterated by Sentry MS crossfire and I got to watch his behavior a bit.

He ran around more actively than a normal Gobbie, changing direction and moving more erratically (there were only a few scattered zombies nearby, so he had no Elites to run towards), and the MT actually has a short range teleport ability. All Goblins now have short term burst speed, where they move faster than usual with a streaking racing stripes sort of animation, but the MT actually teleports, though only about 20 yards at a time.

As for the death and the loot… meh. I only got one of them in my games post-Community Buff (they seem to be the rarest of the goblin types), so not much to generalize from. Just one Legendary Item, but since normal Gobbies hardly every drop a legendary (maybe 1/20 or so, outside of community buffs), an MT dropping even one feels like an upgrade.

Malevolent Tormentor drop.

Click through for details and juicy mega-pack screenshots of the Gem Hoarder, Blood Thief, and Odious Collector treasure goblin types, spotted in the upcoming patch on the PTR

Gem Hoarders

And… here we go.

These guys are silver (more like shiny metal or chrome, really) in color and they drop gems. A lot of gems. I saw several of them during the Blizzcon demo and thought they were just turned up in drop rate for that demo, but I’ve found half a dozen on the PTR and they all dropped about the same as they did at Blizzcon. The usual take is around 30 gems each, but that varies a lot since they drop a gem every few yards while they run. If ever there’s a goblin type you want to avoid killing instantly, this is the one, since you can easily get another 10-15 gems by poking him a few times and prolonging the experience.

The gem quality is appropriate for your level, just like other gems that drop from other sources. At level 70 this means about 10-15 Marquise for every 1 Imperial, with a usual Gem Hoarder good for about 30 Marquise and 2-3 Imperial. That’s assuming he drops 5-10 while you chase him, and then 20-25 in one stack upon death.

Last night I got the first pack of these guys I’ve ever seen in a Rift, and the gem take was incredible. As was the chaos, as I spotted the pack just as the Rift Guardian spawned, and there was another boss mixed in as well. I managed to herd about 5 of the goblins north into that little dead end and slaughtered them there, but the others scattered widely, and there was a lot of chasing after them while trying to ignore the Elite, dozens of trash mobs, and the Rift Guardian.

Lots of fun, even though I’m playing softcore on the PTR, so there wasn’t any feeling of actual risk or danger. Just greed.

Sighting the pack.

Goblins everywhere.

Guardian spawned mid-scramble.

Chaos and sparklies.

The total take.

The last pic shows my inventory after the battle, and I had (conveniently) compacted all my Marquise before beginning that Rift, so I didn’t have more than 3 of any type of gem going in. Adding it up, I picked up something like 430 Marquise and 72 Imperial gems from those Goblins, and man… it was a lot of left clicking. I’d have traded 10% of the gems just for auto-pickup of the stacks.

Seriously, why do we auto-pickup potions which no one wants after they’ve found a legendary potion, but not auto-pick materials and gems, which everyone wants? This isn’t Diablo 1 and I’m old; all that left clicking is just tiring.

Blood Thieves

First off… “blood thiefs” or “blood thieves?” The second is grammatically correct, but it’s kind of an odd plural, reminiscent of the “staffs vs. staves” or “dwarfs vs. dwarves” arguments from related fantasy properties. Or how about this; what if this type of goblin was called a “Blood Shard Thief” or “Shard Thief.” Then couldn’t the plural be “Shards Thief?” the way “Attorney General” is pluralized “Attorneys General?”

Okay, probably not.

As for the goblins, they’re not very common, and their drops vary widely. During the community buff last week with double Blood Thieves and double Shards, each one resulted in around 4x the usual drop, which generally meant at least two trips back to town for gambling… except that Gambling didn’t have any buffed drop rate, which made it fairly pointless when you could pick up 30+ legendaries every 5 minutes in a Rift.

Once my DH was well-geared I was flagrantly ignoring Blood Shards during the buff. Now that it’s over though, and legendary drop rates are back to earth… a big pack of Blood Thiefs is quite a valuable resource. I got a big mob of them last night with my new Monk, and as he only had 3 mismatched pieces of the Thousand Storms set and 1 piece of Sunwuko’s, I was all about the gambling.

Kinda like this…

The total take from this scramble was around 1800 shards, fueling 3 trips back for a full gamble with around 350 left over. And yes, the lack of a soft cap to exceed 500 shards is still really annoying. Especially with Blood Thief packs. Nothing kills the flow of your game more than filling up on Shards, TP to town, gamble, salvage the blues/rares, back to the dungeon, pick up 500 more Shards, TP town, etc. I’m always annoyed by that playing solo, and it’s much worse in multiplayer. There when I fill up and others aren’t, I’ll often gamble amulets just to get rid of the Shards ASAP so I don’t ruin the game flow by making everyone else wait.

Srsly Bliz… fix this. The 500 Shard cap is stupid, and not allowing characters to exceed it when all the shards are picked up in a single stretch (such as after a Blood Thief massacre) is a needed fix. We know you can do it too, since if you merge back Shards at the end of a season, you may temporarily exceed 500 Shards on your main account.

Odious Collectors

The last of the new types of Goblins drop materials and crafting plans. They’re pretty boring most of the time, since even a big pack of them in a Rift just results in a lot of blue and yellow materials. Which can be extremely useful in a new season, but isn’t real visually amazing.

You know what is visually amazing? When you get a pack of these with your first character in a season, when you don’t know any legendary or set plans yet. This remains the most ridiculous visual I’ve seen of Treasure Goblins in Diablo 3, and no, the still screenshot doesn’t do justice to the glowing wall of green/gold beams. There were upwards of 80 legendary plans in that narrow peninsula.

Green goblins!

Perfect killing field.

Green goblin butchery.

ALL THE PLANS

First trip back to town…

Yes, it was amazing. I learned something like 50 new plans since a lot of them were duplicates. (They don’t stack, oddly. Duplicate rare plans and gem plans stack, but duplicate legendary items plans do not.) I also picked up around 1500 Veiled Crystals, 600 blue materials, and 100 white materials. It wasn’t all fun and profit though, since the clicking. Teh clikings!

Seriously, it felt like the Diablo 1 days, with literally hundreds of left clicks to grab up all of the stacks.